Communication
Communicating online is an essential part of an online course. Most of the online communication for your course will occur within WebCT. To find out about WebCT communication features, click here. You will still, however, need to know how use e-mail and participate in discussions and chats.
E-mail
Several e-mail software programs are available, including Microsoft Outlook Express, Eudora, and online e-mail services such as Hotmail and Yahoo Web Mail. All of these programs include features that allow you to create, send, forward, reply to, and save e-mail messages. These processes are described below.
Create an e-mail message
To create an e-mail message, you need to provide the following information:
Who you are sending it to: Enter the exact e-mail address. E-mail addresses are often case-sensitive, which means that if some letters appear in upper or lower case, they have to be typed that way to be valid. You can copy and paste an address into this field or select it from the address book included in your e-mail program.
Who it is from: Your e-mail program will fill in your e-mail address.
Subject line: This is a brief note that tells the message receiver what the e-mail is about.
The message: This is where you type your message. You can copy and paste information from another program into this field.
Some optional features:
CC: (carbon copy) To indicate to the message receiver that you have also sent a copy to someone else.
BCC: (blind carbon copy) To send a copy to someone else without letting the message receiver know you have forwarded a copy to someone else.
Send an e-mail message
Once you have finished composing your e-mail message, click on the Send button. If you have entered the "To:" e-mail address correctly, the message will be received. Messages can "bounce back" if the e-mail address is incorrect or if there are problems with the message receiver's e-mail service. A bounced message will appear as a message for you with an "error" message as part of its subject line.
Forward an e-mail message
This feature allows you to forward a message you have received to another person. Clicking on "Forward" inserts the body of the message into a new e-mail message. You can edit the message text and the subject line before forwarding the e-mail. You need to fill in the "To:" e-mail address of the person you are forwarding the message to and click on "Send."
Reply to an e-mail message
This feature allows you to reply to an e-mail message without having to re-enter the sender's e-mail address. Click on the "Reply" button. The message will be re-addressed to the sender's e-mail address and the original message will appear. You can edit the message text and subject line before sending.
Save an e-mail message
This message allows you to save an e-mail message to a location outside of your e-mail program. In an online course, you may want to save e-mails related to the course in your course folder as a way to keep track of messages sent to your instructor or classmates.
Send e-mail messages with attachments
Files such as word processing documents, Web pages, pictures, and video and audio clips can be attached to e-mail messages. In an online course this feature facilitates sharing resources in an electronic format. Students can submit assignments to their instructor or share resources and group assignments with other students by e-mail.
Send group mailings
This feature allows you to send an e-mail to several people at once. By pre-setting a group list of people and their e-mail addresses, you can enter the group name into the "To:" field of the message rather than entering each person's e-mail address separately. In an online class, this feature allows you to enter the e-mail address for each student once when you want to send a message to all of your classmates. This feature is also useful to facilitate communication with a smaller class group for discussions or group assignments.
Discussions
Another way to communicate with the whole class or smaller groups within the class is to post a message to a discussion area. The discussion area is an electronic message centre much like a bulletin board. Students can read messages, reply to messages, or post new messages. Within WebCT, there is an area for online class discussions. For more information about using the discussion area in WebCT, click on Using WebCT.
Chat
Chat is a communication tool that allows real-time communication. Once a chat session has been started with the users entering the "chat room," any user can enter text that appears on the other users' computer screens. In an online course, chat is used for pre-arranged discussions such as having a guest "speaker" visit the online course, class discussions on a specific topic, online office hours, or one-on-one tutorial sessions. For more information about using the chat feature in WebCT, click on Using WebCT.
 
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